Papercrete 1

From an email update sent to family and friends, August 2009:

August 25, 2009

I haven’t been writing everyone as much as I normally might, because I’ve been very busy with this project this spring and summer. Here’s the status….

It took weeks of work in the late spring and early summer to do the unpleasant, tedious, and 100% necessary job of trenching in the septic lines to dispose of the, well, you know. Digging trenches in the hard-packed desert earth 2-feet or more deep in 104-plus degree summer weather is really not my idea of a good time. It is good exercise, however. Regardless of my sentiments on the merits of this endeavor, I did this by hand for four or five days, and managed to knock off oh, maybe about 75 linear feet of trenching, out of about 200 feet. I can totally see why they hire Mexicans to do this. (Is that racist?) Hell, I think that Mexicans are smart enough to use a trencher, and eventually I broke down and hired a couple of guys (who were also smarter than me and used a trencher) to help me out. This has proven to be a good move, since there are some things that it’s simply easier to earn new money for rather than to doggedly do yourself. Trenching septic lines in an Arizona summer is one of those jobs.

Anyway, it’s done. I might also add that hiring experienced people to do construction work with you is a good thing, if for no other reason than that they are more likely to get things right than my novice self is. In addition to learning how to operate a nifty-but-noisy trencher, I’ve also been edified on the fact that vent pipes should be located close to every sink and toilet drain, a thing I was about to not do in my ignorance. I figured that as long as there were a couple of vents somewhere along the pipeline that this would suffice. The price of this faux-pas would have been toilets that won’t swallow their contents very well. I am disabused of my original notion now. Thank heaven for that.

After the septic lines were laid, it was time to frame the slab with wood and stakes so that the cement could be poured. Although the pad was fairly level, there was still a lot of fill dirt that had to be brought in (by hand in wheelbarrows, of course) to make it even. Then the wooden frames were staked into place, and the pouring of the cement could occur.

I used soilcrete, rather than regular cement, to make the slab. As one might guess, instead of sifted sand and gravel aggregate mixed with Portland cement (like you would buy from a commercial cement company), I used native wash sand from the D:F Ranch property and Portland cement in a 6-to-1 ratio. It has sand, silt, small rocks, and plant debris mixed in with it. The construction guys I hired were skeptical that this would actually work, but I read about it on the intertubes, and since everything you read there is always true, I assured them that it would work. There’s nothing as confident as an ignorant person who’s certain that he’s right.

Luckily enough, the tubenet was correct, and the soilcrete did turn out very well. In fact, it’s utterly indistinguishable from “regular” cement in terms of hardness, function, and appearance. See attached photos for proof of what I am saying. The guys I hired were pretty impressed with how it turned out, and their skepticism withered. HA! The major area in which soilcrete, aka “earth-stabilized cement”, is distinguishable from the store-bought stuff is in the arena of price. By my calculations, this 600-square-foot slab cost me about $750 in materials, at most. A more likely price for commercially-delivered cement would have been $1500 to $2000, and perhaps even more. The slab price also included beer for my slaves. It’s amazing what you can get people to do for you with beer. The slaves were recruited because they either feared me, wanted me to quit my nagging, or simply intended to get drunk – not sure of which. Many thanks to the slave dudes for their assistance. I owe y’all one. Someday. Maybe.

While the slab was exciting, it’s nowhere near as cool as papercrete, mostly because no one knows anything about this stuff other than that it sounds even more ridiculous than the Three Little Pigs, who at least had the decency to stop with straw. (I tried straw. The Bovine Incident of 1999 left me somewhat frosty on straw. Cows won’t eat papercrete. I don’t think.)

For those who are somehow not yet fully informed on what I am using here, papercrete is a mix of pulped paper and Portland cement, and it’s really neat stuff. I’ve got a small army of people who save me their waste paper, and I blend the stuff up with the cement and 150 gallons of water to form an oatmeal-like slurry which I pour into blocks or slipforms or slop directly onto the walls or roof when appropriate.

In this case I have opted to use slipforms, which are big boxes of plywood with walls spaced 12 inches apart, 2 feet high and 8 to 10 feet long, set upon the foundation slab. Into these forms I pour the wet papercrete mix, which promptly starts to drain massive quantities of excess water. It takes about two 200-gallon loads of wet mix to fill each large wall form, or two shorter corner forms. This is hundreds of gallons of papercrete, and it all pretty much has to be done manually, in buckets, up an incline. Later on ladders will come into play. It’s good exercise, and Mexicans would do it for me, but I can’t afford them anymore. I console myself with the fact that I am developing Zen-like patience and acceptable deltoid muscles.

I started the papercrete portion of the work in the first week of August, and it’s been not quite three weeks for me to finish the first course of walls around the perimeter of the guest house. The photos I’ve sent end with me just starting the second course in the future bedroom, and I will have to migrate the forms around the perimeter at least three more times before the walls are high enough for me to start applying the roof beams. The roof will be made of 8” diameter rough pine logs, 24 feet long, upon which I will lay OSB plywood, and then the papercrete blocks I made much of last year and have stored in piles out at D:FR. The gaps in between blocks will be finished with loads of wet mix, which is troweled out to be smooth, after which I will waterproof it somehow.

I’m hoping to finish this project sometime this winter or next spring in 2010. I am going to go to South Africa for most of September (from the 5th to the 26th) and I won’t make any progress for most of that month, but that’s OK considering the opportunity I have to take a great botanical trip with like-minded people. I’ll do what I can in the next two weeks, and then resume working on this house in October sometime. My goal is to perhaps finish the main building envelope by January, and make a final move in April or May. There’s no strict deadline per se, but I’d like to finally move out to D:FR after 10-plus years of renting a house here in the Yucca townsite.

Anyway, that’s the story from lovely Yucca and the Mojave-Sonoran Desert ecozone. Hope that all is well with everyone. Let me know how you are if I haven’t seen or heard from you recently.

Laying reinforcement wire in framed guest house slab before pouring cement foot-thick footings are rough-poured with soil-cement (mix of sandy wash soil and Portland, no aggregate). first part of bedroom slab being made of soil-cement mix (soilcrete) finishing the fourth part of the slab a few days after first two parts were done. all five slab panels are now poured, as of Thur, July 30, 2009. finished guest house soilcrete slab, with rebar for papercrete walls along edges. a failed experiment with dry papercrete blocks, which are difficult to hold up in position on edge. decided to make slipforms for wet papercrete mix instead of trying to use dry blocks in walls. plywood slipforms for corners of papercrete walls, partly filled with wet paper-cement mix. removing corner forms, exposing papercrete walls to air and sun, so they can dry out in ~2 weeks. bedroom walls, 2 feet high, 1st course of papercrete poured, rubber gloves set out to dry. clamping wall forms onto lowest course, to make second course of walls - repeat until 8 feet high, then add roof. sorting out 10 years-worth of saved glass bottles, will add to walls in stained-glass effect once walls are done. guest house walls, 1st course entirely poured, appx 2 feet tall. another view of papercrete guest house walls, did all this in less than 3 weeks, only about 3 more months to go! ;-).